Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Hello friends! I am happy to link up today with some of my favorite Bilingual Bloggers from I Teach Bilinguals to bring you a new blog post! Today will be all about inferences. We all know how difficult this skill can be, however, with a few tips, your students will be experts at making inferences! Stay tuned there's a FREEBIE just for you!

When students hear "We will be making inferences," they do not automatically know how to respond to this. However, it is important to explain that they already make inferences on a daily basis. One student came up to me and told me, "Teacher, I think it might rain today." This was a great teaching moment. I asked him, "What clues tell you it's going to rain?" To which he responded that he had looked out the window, the sky was dark, it was windy, etc. That was a perfect inference! These moments can help students believe in their background knowledge and create inferences more easily.

It is vital for students to be exposed to the academic vocabulary involved when making inferences. The following is a short list of words and inference stems I have posted in my classroom:

I enjoy using a photo of the day for students to build up on background knowledge and practice making inferences. They study the photograph, there's question prompts for those that need it, then students talk about what they inferred that is happening in the photo or what they infer will happen next. Students love the photographs and scenarios presented, and they keep a journal of these to refer to in the future.

After these three tips, students feel more confident when making inferences on passages and readings. Hope these are helpful as we continue to raise rigor for our bilingual learners.

Enjoy these FREE festive inference organizers. I like to jazz them up with some glitter and decorate a bulletin board! How do you tackle the task of teaching inferences to your students? I'd love to hear from you in the comments :)